


i always wanted to die clean and pretty

by eluvion



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Gen, Gift Fic, I dont go into it but both of them are mentioned, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Persona 5: The Royal Spoilers, Post-Canon, War Metaphors, talking about war, this was also supposed to be a gift fic for christmas but theres no christmas, this was supposed to be an akeshu fic but theres no akeshu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:08:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28306563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eluvion/pseuds/eluvion
Summary: “Japan was on opposite sides during those wars,” he said. “We were allied with Germany in World War Two, but we helped the United States with Containment during the Cold War.”She laughed bitterly. “Kid, I don’t give a shit aboutpolitics.You’re either killing people, or your people are being killed, and at some point, it’s both. When that happens, you’re on the wrong side.”In which revenge and war are the same thing, really.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira
Kudos: 22





	i always wanted to die clean and pretty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [avis_aeria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avis_aeria/gifts).



> Hi; I’m taking a break from the BNHA road trip fic (coming soon,,, or at least coming at some point) to launch myself into a new fandom and write a Christmas gift for Meli, who dragged me into this fandom. The title is from [Last Words of a Shooting Star](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssVf326Ox9g) by Mitski.  
>   
> Any inaccuracies are my fault—I was never completely familiar with either World War II or the Cold War. I also don’t really know how the facility would end up realistically being like, so I was light on worldbuilding. Trigger warnings for mentions of suicide (nothing happens, but there’s some talk about it), mentions of abuse, and mentions of war (again, no details, but a lot of talk).  
>   
> Thank you to the best beta in the world, [Kay](https://izarie.tumblr.com/), for editing. Here’s my [tumblr](https://eluvion.tumblr.com/) if you want to talk or ask questions or anything. Happy holidays, everyone!

Akechi Goro woke up on February 3rd in a facility he only half remembered, his throat parched and regret already pooling in his stomach, twisting around his insides like grapevines. This was wrong. All of it, the off-white sheets, the blank walls of a cold room, the way his heart was still beating and his lungs were gasping in the empty air around him as if it would run out, the way his memories skipped and stuttered like a scratched-up record—all of it was _wrong._

His last full memory was in the engine room. He’d been bleeding into the ground, crimson staining everything, coating his hands, sticky and warm. But he had been _cold_ , shivering against the metal wall behind him, feeling something vital already draining from between his fingers, Shido’s cognitive version of him already dissolving. Then, pieces of memories—talking to Sae and Akira on Christmas Eve, shards of Maruki’s Palace, gritted teeth and Loki ripping through Shadows, Akira at his back smiling, _knowing_ his death was coming. He had been ready, had let the thought rest in his mind for days, for _weeks_ , and he had accepted it.

 _This is retribution,_ he had said to himself. _This is justice._

And then he didn’t die. 

That, Goro supposed, was what one called a _problem._

⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺

The facility itself was fine. He barely remembered it, but he could remember the way his mother stank of alcohol, the way the nurses’ eyes watched the two of them, pity exuding from their gazes, whispers on their tongues. 

There was a routine to it, these days. He would wake up, stretch, ignore the feeling of _wrongness_ , the part of him that knew he shouldn’t be alive. Every day, he walked to the cafeteria and ate alone, eyeing the others cautiously, then made his way to the therapy room and sat, staring, feeling the silence fill up space around him until the therapist said something. After an hour, he left, and did whatever tasks were assigned to him. They were meaningless things, washing dishes and cleaning sheets and other busywork, and they slowly faded to the background. Then he would sleep if he could, and make his way through a panic attack if he couldn’t. 

It was _fine_ . It was boring, in a strange way, but he didn’t have anything better to do. He was sure that he could ask for a phone call or for a letter to be delivered, but to whom? Akira— _Kurusu_ , he mentally corrected himself—surely wouldn’t want to hear from him, not after everything. It was a little sad that Kurusu was the only one he could think of contacting, but wasn’t that him? Sad, poor little Akechi Goro, bent on revenge because he didn’t know what else to do with his life. 

It didn’t matter now. No one minded him as long as he didn’t mind them, which was perfectly fine with Goro.

That was how everything was here—passable, fine, boring, a place to live until either the rot in your head killed you or you killed it. 

He went to bed with one glove in his pocket and a pair on his hands. Goro didn’t have the energy, didn’t have the _will_ to take them off. They were comfortable, easy, something to smoothen and soften the world, keep it from touching him, from seeing every scar that wrapped around his palms and fingers.

When Goro had first started out, the shield had a purpose, a reasoning behind it—he had to be perfect, and the cigarette burns and cuts, the long healed wounds of those homes he had been in— _t_ _hose_ were not perfect. Sometimes, he would just put makeup on the scars, hide them that way, but that always felt too flimsy, too unpredictable to be a good defense.

And then he had given one of his gloves to Ak—Kurusu, promised a duel that was still unfulfilled, ripped off half of a mask. 

He had bought a new pair the next day, a part of him left too vulnerable with his skin and scars showing. But he kept the other glove tucked in his coat pocket. The other promise. 

Goro hated loose ends, and he knew they would just trip him up, make him stumble on whatever path he was moving through. What even _was_ that path, these days? He had no vengeance left, just spaces in his ribs in which ice used to freeze, cold and unyielding. Now… now there was nothing.

It didn’t matter, anyway. He knew where the tripwire was; he knew how it sat in his pocket, its gentle weight reminding him of the past like a melody caught in his mind, looping, over and over again, with the lyrics of _this isn’t trivial_.

It was worse when he was trying to sleep. Every distraction would be gone by then and there would be nothing he was able to think of but memories, promises, and wishes, and every other unrealistic thing that he thought of. Retribution and justice intertwined, a chorus of different voices, and the laughter in the back of his mind sounded too much like Shido.

_Poor little Goro, stuck in a trap of your own making. Foolish Goro. Naive Goro._

_Can’t even kill yourself right._

⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺

It was three in the morning, and Goro had long since realized that sleep was not going to come. He had taken to wandering the hallways when he couldn’t rest, waiting until he was too tired to walk anymore and then making his way back to the room given to him, passing out for two or three hours before he forced himself up again. He was sure they already knew, that they watched the cameras, watched _him_ , fervent and panicked, fallen so far from the _Detective Prince_ , from the smiling marionette that he used to be. 

_Fallen_ , he thought, and he remembered _Paradise Lost_ , which had begun as another book to read and memorize—another way to charm and laugh and make himself seem smarter, _better_ , for the cameras—but he could still remember the book and how it seemed to peer inside of him, words written and translated as if read from his own heart. It was ironic, in a way, that the people he spent so long trying to be perfect for forgot him, discarded him into the backs of their minds, and that all he was left with were these cameras tucked into corners and following his restless movements through the facility. 

He made his way to an empty courtyard, a small and pretty place. A narrow path wound through planted willows and flowers, and a few benches were scattered around the space.

“‘All is not lost,’” Goro recited to himself, his voice quiet, “‘the unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and the courage to never submit or yield.’”

He laughed to himself. His hatred for Shido might have been immortal, but he had no revenge left in him. He had already yielded, again and again and _again_ , had let Kurusu worm his way into his brain, and as for _will_ , he barely had one to _live_ anymore. 

Goro heard a snort behind him and tensed. He turned, coming to face an old woman. She was short, with hair that had already moved from black to silver, and a hand, wrinkled as tree bark, wrapped around a walking stick. Her other hand was plastic and metal, a prosthetic poking out from under her clothes. She, unlike him, was wearing the clothes given by the facility, drab and an ill-fitting off-white, the same color as the walls. Colors marking all of them unwanted, the scraps of paper left in the recycling bin after the shape of society was cut into a page.

He had refused. He still refused, made himself wash his two different outfits, shrugging on an old coat. His old one had been destroyed, but had kept extras, just in case. Wearing the facility’s things still felt too much like defeat, too much like thinking that he would be here forever, and he couldn’t bring himself to accept that. He would find somewhere eventually, whether it was a house or the end of a noose, but he _couldn’t_ stay here forever.

“ _Paradise Lost_? Really?” she laughed. “I should’ve known you would be into that.”

“Excuse me?” Goro asked.

“The girls said you were a pretentious little brat,” she said, as if that explained anything.

“Pardon?” he asked again.

She sighed. “The nurses. They’re really sweet, you know, if you let them in.”

He should have known that they would talk about him behind his back. There was nothing _sweet_ about it, and he could imagine their whispers: _broken little child, useless, why is he even here, why is he even—_

“How do you know me?” Goro asked tersely. _How do you know me, what are they saying about me, what are_ you _saying about me?_

“Calm down, kid. They didn’t say anything bad; they just want something to talk about. And…” The woman trailed off, trying to find her words. “Look, let’s just say you’re the youngest one here and you haven’t talked to any of us, so we tend to be curious.”

His mask of neutrality was still on; he would have felt it slip. Goro didn’t think she would be perceptive enough to catch his tells, so he stood up straighter and readjusted his coat. 

“Who’s ‘we’?” 

“The old folks. Most people here are either just above your age or around mine.”

It was true. His mother used to visit every few years, sometimes staying for months, sometimes for just a few days. She was nineteen when she had him, and Shido had already fucked off to Tokyo. 

This was just a place where the scraps built up, the dregs of society, throwaway children and old women with no homes, no people to go back to.

He was still tired of it, tired of not knowing what they were saying, not knowing every poisonous word, every thorn on their tongues, or maybe he was tired of _knowing_ what they were talking about, how much they all hated him. Their words were no longer poison but knives, ripping cleanly into everything he built, splitting flesh and cutting bone and leaving him bleeding onto the floor. The reality was that they would always talk about him because they would always know that something was wrong, that _he_ was something wrong.

“Let’s sit down,” the woman said. “I’m not going to drag you back inside if you fall over, and I don’t want you to have to drag me back either.”

Goro started to say that she wouldn’t have to do anything, but he reasoned that she _was_ quite old and he _would_ have to be the one to take her back if she fell, so he walked to the nearest bench and sat down. As the woman made her way over, Goro watched her movements carefully. She was old, but she was still able to move relatively easily, even with the cane.

She sat down next to him, letting her cane lean on the bench.

“My name is Aina, no honorifics. At this point, I’m tired of formalities.”

“Aina?” he asked. “No family name?”

“No family left,” she chuckled. “I never had a husband or kids, and both my parents were… Well, I wouldn’t say _monsters_ , but something pretty close.”

“I suppose we have that in common,” Goro said. He looked down, clenching his hands, still covered in his gloves. “Well, my mother wasn’t a monster, but my father…”

“Oh!” Aina said. “You’re _her_ kid. Of course.”

Something caught in his throat.

He looked up, catching her gaze. “Did you know her?”

She sighed, shifting her gaze. “Sorry. I never talked to her. I just remembered that her hair was just like yours.” 

That was the connection most people made—his hair and his eyes were his mother’s, and everything else came from Shido. Well, it was a matter of poisoned roots, he supposed. If every part of himself was set in his blood like they said, if his future was dictated by blood type and genetics, he supposed it would have made sense. An alcoholic mother who committed suicide and a glutton for power and success, now locked in a jail by a group of teenagers. What a pretty picture they would make.

He broke the brief moment of silence. “I’m Akechi Goro. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Don’t bullshit me, kid,” Aina said.

“Oh?” Goro asked. He put on his Detective Prince voice and smiled at her. “Do you have a problem with diplomacy?”

“As someone who has been on the wrong side of two wars, yeah, I do.”

A beat of silence rested between them.

“How old are you?” Goro asked, raising a brow.

“It’s rude to ask a lady her age, you know,” she said.

Goro rolled his eyes. “It’s horrible to meet you. I came here to be alone.”

She laughed, and it was as sharp, like shattered glass. “Likewise.”

He tugged at his gloves, and it reminded him of a lifetime ago, laughing at Akira adjusting his own even when he wasn’t wearing any—a habit left over by the Metaverse—and the way Goro’s heart beat faster and his cheeks heated around him. He shook off the pang of longing that went through him. 

“Do you come here often?” he asked.

“Almost every night,” she said. “I’ve lived a lifetime of war. Some memories will never stop sticking.”

Goro remembered the first time he killed a person, the way his hands shook and vomit caught in his throat and there wasn’t any blood, but he still felt dirty, _unclean_ , as if the kill was inside of his veins. He couldn’t even remember the man’s name, but that _feeling_ stayed with him. It faded over the years, the panic and guilt and whatever else was pushed into his mind with one single movement, but the first one was always the hardest.

That’s what he told himself after he shot Kurusu—that the shaking of his hands and the smell of blood caught in his nose were normal, that this was the first kill he had ever done in the real world. So of course it felt wrong. As it turned out, out that wasn’t even true.

There were other memories that stuck, too, of course, but Goro could still feel the recoil of the gun in his hand, the _bang_ that resounded through the room despite the silencer attached to the barrel of the gun. The way he smiled at the kill and threw up from it five minutes later.

Goro looked back at Aina. “‘The wrong side of two wars’?”

“So we’re getting personal tonight, huh?”

“You don’t have to—,” he started.

She cut him off. “But you’d still want to know. It’s okay. Besides, not like anyone other than the nurses will listen to me rambling about my life.”

She broke eye contact, and a faint breeze caught the willow trees around them, a ripple of white noise filling up the quiet spaces between her words.

“I was born in the aftermath of the first World War, then became a scientist for the next one. I continued that during the Cold War.” Her words were simple, direct.

Goro gave her a long stare. She wasn’t tense, but he supposed it had been a long time, so it made sense.

“Japan was on opposite sides during those wars,” he said. “We were allied with Germany in World War Two, but we helped the United States with Containment during the Cold War.”

She laughed bitterly. “Kid, I don’t give a shit about _politics_. You’re either killing people, or your people are being killed, and at some point, it’s both. When that happens, you’re on the wrong side.”

 _His people_. Who were his people? The world never really cared about him, and he doubted any of the Phantom Thieves did either. The only person had been his mother, but even she had killed herself because of him. Well, him and Shido. Goro was the weapon; Shido was the one that pulled the trigger.

“It’s cliche, but it’s true, you know,” Aina continued. “Wars are always the same. Politicians and generals with tunnel vision, one side doing anything to stop the other, and in the end, the price for peace is too many dead bodies.”

Goro wouldn’t call what he did a war. But it yielded the same results as one. There was peace, but too many lay dead at his hands, dead at Shido’s, and neither of them got anywhere. 

“Revenge, I suppose, is the same,” he said. “Too many dead, nothing really changed in the end.”

Aina laughed. “Revenge is war; war is revenge. Both lead to nowhere.”

Both led to empty spaces. Where do you go, when the thing you devoted your life to has no meaning anymore, has no place, when the ice melts from your ribs and the fire is gone from your nerves, and you realise that you never had a life in the first place?

“I was going to kill someone,” Goro said, “but I never did.”

He looked up to see her staring at him.

“What?” he asked, the word sharp. 

Aina’s eyes seemed to pierce through him. “What were you going to do after you killed them?” 

He snorted bitterly. “Probably kill myself. Dance on his grave. Make my blood stain his coffin.” 

“Good thing you never killed him then, huh?”

“I don’t know,” Goro said. 

What if he had? What if he had killed Shido, killed the Phantom Thieves, nothing left but blood on his hands and a gun in his coat? Perhaps it would be better, to have ended the bloodline, kept their crimson sins from spreading, from digging deeper roots into the ground. What if he had killed Shido before the Phantom Thieves, before Kurusu, let both of them dissolve into dust? 

It was a pointless thought; he knew he couldn’t change the past, but he liked it sometimes, liked imagining succeeding, _winning_ , getting the retribution he had always craved. Or perhaps it was the other part that appealed to him, the thought of doing what was right, forcing both of their poisons to stop in their tracks and ridding the world of their waste.

“Neither do I,” Aina said. “It’s all a gamble, isn’t it? Seeing if living was really worth it. I suppose we’ll both find out at some point.”

The wind stopped blowing, and the world seemed to still for a minute. The quiet seemed to take up space between them, holding the world at gunpoint.

Aina broke the silence first. “I’m going back to bed.” The wind blew again, and she stood, taking her cane from the bench. “I don’t have what it takes to really help you, and I don’t think you know how to help me either.”

She started to walk away, and he let himself hunch over and put his face into his gloves.

Aina turned before she got to the door. “But I think given some time, we could. And, for the record, the aftermath of war is the same, too. You gotta rebuild those bridges, make reparations, bring peace with your enemies. Give and take.”

She left the courtyard before Goro could say another word. 

⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺

Three days later, Goro wrote a letter and mailed it to Leblanc’s address.

Three days later, he laid the groundwork for a rebuilt bridge, made reparations, rekindled the flames, let ceasefires become peace treaties.

 _This is retribution_ , he told himself. _This will be true justice._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I will probably be writing more in this fandom, so keep an eye out. <33


End file.
